Invista classrooms come in all shapes and sizes. Some are intimate gatherings of potential leaders in which the groundwork is laid for anticipated succession plans and promotions. Others are built from students who will meet inside of them for the first time and together tackle challenging lessons that hold the key to long term success within chosen fields. In spite of this variation, a constant is that the Invista student is always an adult learner and, in the field of adult learning, Invista instructors are nimble experts able to present user driven experiences designed to appreciate the challenges and strengths unique to the adult classroom.

Adult learners typically share some fundamental preferences within the classroom.

They:

·Like to know why they’re learning

Adult learners are most successful when they understand that the time, energy, and effort they’re being asked to invest is meaningful. They like to have goals fully disclosed and success defined from the start.

·Like to be deferred to

Adult learners like to have their talents recognized and their temperaments appreciated. Adult learners buy into tasks and join communities that welcome them without limits or lists of expectations.

·Like to feel safe

Adult learners come to the classroom with backpacks packed full of baggage. When adult classrooms are nonthreatening environments, in which success comes to students early, anxieties are efficiently disarmed.

·Like to be engaged

Adult learners are most likely to take in ideas successfully when they are delivered in the language they feel most comfortable in. Digital, dynamic, and multimedia presentations approach topics in a student’s leisure tongue making them not only easy to digest but also innately nonthreatening.

Presenting to adult learners with a mindfulness of these preferences reshapes an entire classroom by transforming objectives and lesson plans. Rather than beginning a course with a list of skills they must face, scale, and achieve, students are approached as visitors instructors must anticipate and guide through an experience. Lessons are constructed to invite students into challenges with initial presentations that expect the typical preferences of an adult learner, exercises that maintain a student’s engagement, and final assessments that appreciate a concept’s eventual real life presentation. Adult learners leave user driven classrooms with complex understandings of interconnected concepts, rather than isolated skills. By growing literate critical thinkers, user driven adult classrooms deliver employers more than a group of employees who can now complete a given task, and instead return workgroups with the skills required to best complete any task.

It is our pleasure to welcome back Don Sosnowski to Invista Performance Solutions. Beginning October 27, 2014, Don will serve as Executive Director of our great team. Don has a rich 14 year background in both community colleges and workforce development. Most recently Don worked as the Assistant Director of Workforce Development at Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region (formerly Tacoma Goodwill), a position where he helped plan, develop, and manage vocational programs to provide opportunities to disabled and disadvantaged individuals.

Some of you may also remember Don from when he previously worked with Invista as the Director of Corporate Learning, where he developed and delivered learning solutions to businesses in the Tacoma-Seattle area. His background also includes community college experience in Illinois, Colorado, and Washington. Don can be reached at 253.583.8860 and his email is dsosnowski@invistaperforms.org.

Please join us in welcoming Don!

]]>http://www.invistaperforms.org/welcome-our-new-executive-director/feed/0What if Failure Wasn’t an Option?http://www.invistaperforms.org/what-if-failure-wasnt-an-option/
http://www.invistaperforms.org/what-if-failure-wasnt-an-option/#commentsThu, 23 Oct 2014 17:43:33 +0000http://www.invistaperforms.org/?p=1195CONTINUE READING >> ]]>The adage, “Failure is not an option,” attributed to Gene Kranz in the movie Apollo 13 wasn’t actually spoken during the crisis portrayed in the film. But it could have been. Kranz has said that during the actual events, the team never gave up on finding a solution. No one panicked. No one threw their hands up and said there is no solution. And they were able to bring our astronauts back to earth.

When a crisis arises, how does your team react? Do they come together calmly to lay out options? Do they work together and find a solution? Or do they panic? Shoot down other’s ideas? Give up? One of the important roles of a leader, is ensuring that panic does not overcome a team’s ability to problem solve and move forward. Many minds working together are often more successful in solving crises. By making failure a non-option, the team is encouraged to continue until a solution is identified.

On the IPS team, we occasionally face a crisis as all work teams do. How we handle it is a direct reflection of our core values. We value the customer experience and strive to ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Our team problem solving reflects this and our best solutions ensure that the customer experiences no disruption or panic – often they don’t even know there was a crisis!

What brings your workforce? Is the daily grind an obligation, a calling, a necessary evil, or a welcomed hobby?

For the majority, work is a non-negotiable that facilitates A to B while offering in exchange something between amusement and meaning. The lucky find themselves in places seemly meant only for them, and the unlucky find themselves somewhere all the same. While superficially motives might seem better left unexplored- sleeping dogs and all that-, a closer look at why your team shows up each day can effectively help to harness a workforce particularly in modern professional climates where much of a team are likely calculated investors building functional for themselves out of limited selections.

An expedition into the hearts of your employees is sure to require an open mind. Managers should be prepared to find unpleasant truths and lose imagined intimacy when met with authentic characterizations of their staff. However, honesty will ultimately cultivate partnerships that transcend the artificial and illicit dedication from a workforce that can realize impossible dreams and deadlines with deep intrinsic power. When you stop playing the game, the game itself stops being relevant to your team.

The leap towards real answers allows you to see your pieces for what they are and effectively exploit them strategically. You can offer a workforce you know meaningfully tailored incentives and present tasks shrewdly explaining to those you burden their specific gains in the proposed investment. You assure success by becoming a partner with those who toil beneath you; by learning the language your team speaks you are able to effectively translate your objectives and move a team to see them as their own.

An authentic and personal workplace builds real success for its employees by moving each individual towards genuine personal objectives. The growth of a team offers a manager increased competency and previously unanticipated strengths. By fostering natural growth a manager gains breadth and has a workforce that is not only adeptly proficient but also broadly educated.

]]>http://www.invistaperforms.org/what-do-you-really-want-from-me/feed/0Heritage Supervisors: Why the Rush for Developmenthttp://www.invistaperforms.org/heritage-supervisors-why-the-rush-for-development/
http://www.invistaperforms.org/heritage-supervisors-why-the-rush-for-development/#commentsTue, 07 Oct 2014 20:58:45 +0000http://www.invistaperforms.org/?p=1174CONTINUE READING >> ]]>We are pleased to announce a joint effort with Global Corporate College to provide regular white papers with information key to the success of any human resource department. The first of these papers, titled “Heritage Supervisors” will provide key information and advice regarding the development of future leaders.

Here are some questions to consider while you read:

• What is the generation mix between Frontline Supervisors and new entry-level millennial employees in your organization? Are there new dynamics that are being created?

• What is your organization doing to improve engagement at the frontline? Are you working with your Frontline Supervisors?

• How has your company rebuilt trust with your frontline supervisors and workers post the economic downturn?

Remember, Invista Performance Solutions has significant experience working with seasoned front line supervisors and supporting their core management competency skill development. Contact us to learn how we work with Global Corporate College to supply the same high quality training you receive in the State of Washington, on a nationwide scale. We have worked in the past to provide this type of training for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and we look forward to working with you!

I began the article first amused, but quickly found the passion and pain that fills it to be worthy of reflection. The author makes a compelling case for the end of dress codes, by calling out their simultaneously critical and mercurial natures. A dress code lives in a place of mythos dropped firmly into sharp tangibility- almost purposeful ambiguity realized.

But beyond the beauty apparent to any senior enrolled in the History the English Language or the quick pain Crtalic experienced when prompted to recall her own, what is a dress code? Superficially a dress code creates meaning and order to simplify complexities. Store employees can be found among aisles and young children can be outfitted with ease. Dress codes insure safe work environments in industrial shops by covering fragile toes with steel and yield safe products by keeping loose hairs under wrap.

In an office a dress code is a careful dance that finds the edges for a workforce and offers information about corporate culture and the clients a company serves. Decoding a dress code allows an employee to find the language of his community.

In many ways then, a dress code seems not only paramount but also wise. However, if Crtalic is accurately presenting a byproduct of dress code culture, how does her reaction recolor a corporate mandate of business casual? What values does a business identify with when it makes a similar choice about collarbones? And where is the line between critical, because it creates safety, and alienating, because it passes judgment unnecessarily, fall?

Unfortunately, my reflection has left me without a firm conclusion to present you with. Somehow at once there is every reason to need meaning to be accountable and yet nothing universally inconceivable- and therein perhaps the language that fascinated me is born.

What does your dress code do for your corporate community? Is it protecting a brand, keeping employees safe, or closing your workgroup unnecessarily?

]]>http://www.invistaperforms.org/dress-code-culture/feed/0What Motivates You?http://www.invistaperforms.org/what-motivates-you/
http://www.invistaperforms.org/what-motivates-you/#commentsWed, 17 Sep 2014 17:32:07 +0000http://www.invistaperforms.org/?p=1143CONTINUE READING >> ]]>There are two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivators include pay, perks, or other outside factors. Intrinsic motivators come from within, like passion. When it comes to work, studies have proven that intrinsic motivation is the most effective, more effective than a combination of extrinsic an intrinsic motivation.

How can you use the forms of motivation to improve teaching and learning? It seems like pairing learning with intrinsic motivation is the best way to promote retention and to promote the enjoyment of learning, especially when associated with the workplace. This can also be carried through to home life, after work. Take a look at what gives you the most enjoyment. What can you not wait to do? These are things to look at when looking for how to increase intrinsic motivation.

Motivation is key to any endeavor, including learning. In order to have a successful learning experience it is key to learn what is important to your students, and how to keep them motivated. Learn more about your students, and you should start seeing some great ways to keep them motivated about learning.

How Managers Can Put “O” Dependence to Work

I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a Simonson and Rosen article I found in a past edition of the Harvard Business Review- I borrowed it from a coworker’s desk. In the article “What Marketers Misunderstand About Online Reviews” the authors take readers through a crash course in the power new media has on consumers and advises marketers to learn the language as we’re only headed deeper into a world where no one will make a casual choice ever again.

Simonson and Rosen have complemented their article with a graphic illustrating the O dependence of a modern purchase, or the extent to which a consumer consults other people or outside information sources when making a purchase. On one end is a gallon of milk; on the other end is a laptop computer. They offer that functional purchases are still driven by a purchaser’s own experience (P) and formal information from professional marketing sources (M), but that the opinions of others (O) are sought by consumers increasingly and have begun to impact more than just the electronics market.

When considering this graphic I was struck by the way that among my own purchases, I would be hard pressed to find truly O independent items. I am a consumer in which, as Simonson and Rosen reports, “voracious information seeking has become deeply engrained” (25). How does this moment, where we look for input en masse, impact the average worker or workforce? How can we capitalize as managers on this new universal trait? And how might this new power potentially impair production?

A new desire to learn among a workforce becomes a source of easily tapped potential for management. A workforce that does nothing so well as learn cries out to be offered more. Managers can exploit this by offering regular training opportunities, pairing employees together to cross train, and giving more depth to their explanations of functional tasks. Increased input will create a deeper engagement among a well fed O seeking workforce.

Employees that enjoy O dependence will flourish in highly stimulating environments where information binds choices and daily interactions. However, not all members of a modern workforce will be equally enthused by the transformation of their office into a data orgy. For some, the increased information will seem distracting and unnecessary. To reduce alienating the traditional worker, who prefers to gather information cleanly from professional sources, managers should be careful to still offer more direct and packaged data as an alternative. Perhaps, to avoid dividing an office among O lines managers might even present traditional workers as O sources for the O dependent to tap and turn to.

O dependency doesn’t have an off switch, and another challenge that might present itself in a workforce that seeks to feed O dependent workers might be that in practice, managers who are asked to produce information may be overly taxed by an ever increasing demand. For answers these managers might look to the source of the information madness itself, and rather than task themselves with production turn the work over to the O seeks themselves. Workers might author their own procedures, connect with coworkers through an office intranet, or work collaboratively through shared documents. Workers can be tapped into becoming the O for an organization at once both enriching their own experiences and creating value for the organization.

An organization rich in O is a collaborative machine that resonates with a public that appreciates full disclosure and looks for the human interest in all that surrounds them. O depth capitalizes on the modern wiring workers bring with themselves and exploits it effectively to build an engaged and informed workforce that leads itself to success through data sharing. While O demand and increased O supply may be initially overwhelming, the creation of a culture of O can offer all workers opportunities they will appreciate and O production that keeps O seekers fed without turning management into short order cooks.

Embracing O allows an organization to grow both as a whole and within. Acknowledging the O transformation can put the voracious worker to work for you and put the power behind millions of friends, followers, and links behind your organization.

]]>http://www.invistaperforms.org/where-do-you-go-for-information/feed/0First Ever Quarterly Release!http://www.invistaperforms.org/first-ever-quarterly-release/
http://www.invistaperforms.org/first-ever-quarterly-release/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 16:56:30 +0000http://www.invistaperforms.org/?p=1133We are proud to announce the publication of our first ever quarterly release! This quarter the topic is Corporate Universities. Keep an eye out every quarter for the latest and greatest!